Spark Sport is a premium live and on-demand sports streaming service in New Zealand. Launched in 2019, the platform offers a wide range of live and on demand content such as New Zealand Cricket, English Premier League, England Cricket, NFL, MBA and more. The streaming provider also streams channels such as NBA TV, MUTV, LFCTV, EDGE TV & TAB Trackside, through which sports content is available to viewers around the clock.
A changing playing field for sports broadcasters
Spectator sports are most engaging when audiences don’t know what’s going to happen next. For the sports broadcasting industry itself, the playing field in which they operate has undergone many exhilarating changes over the last few years. In many cases, these have been accelerated and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
As stadiums and venues that were once packed with excitement and atmosphere have been forced to close, we’ve witnessed the increasing significance of over-the-top (OTT) platforms becoming the digital delivery system for the enjoyment and adrenaline sports fans around the world have been missing.
Keeping your distance: remote production and benefits for the sports market
There have been many, many words written recently about remote production, indeed the wider world of remote working generally, spurred on by significantly increased use during the pandemic. But remote production didn’t suddenly spring up overnight, either as a concept or reality.
Let’s step back first. We’ve seen huge growth in the use of IP bonding across sports, especially in the last five years: from single-camera streaming to complex, multi-camera productions, often on the move. From the Rugby World Cup, where LiveU technology was used not only to gather content but also as a disaster recovery solution by ITV Sport, to the FIA World Rally Championship, Austrian football and facilitating coverage of the Spanish lower leagues, the list goes on.
Accompanying that growth has been the rise of remote production. Why is that? What are the benefits?
Supponor moves to remote delivery
Supponor enables rights owners to maximize the value of live broadcast Sports & Entertainment events through world-leading end-to-end Virtual Advertising solutions, allowing partner and brand communications to be targeted and customized for each specific audience segment. Steve Plunkett, Chief Product Officer at Supponor, talks about the challenges brought by the Covid pandemic, and how the company helped its clients move to remote delivery at breakneck speed.
The Big Pivot: From Fans in Stands to Communities in Concert
How Sports Venues are Adapting and Thriving Despite the Effects of COVID-19
Energy, rivalry and victory—the trifecta of elements for an exciting match, no matter the sport. Over the recent years, these aspects have been key components in the sports venue playbook of innovation as they were faced with having to transform the way they did business. Their goal? To create an immersive, energetic and memorable experience that would not only entice fans to attend events in person but also leave them looking forward to coming back again.
BLAST teams up with EVS for complete Esports production environment
Latest EVS VIA and Media Infrastructure solutions underpin BLAST’s new mobile esports production flypack
BLAST the global esports media network delivering world class entertainment experiences, has selected EVS’ market-leading VIA and Media Infrastructure solutions as the backbone of its new esports production flypack. The mobile solution is designed so that BLAST can produce its own live gaming events in-house. With the Covid-19 lockdown impacting mass gatherings, the flexibility of the EVS live production workflow is enabling the esports giant to put on online-only events instead.
Switch on the audience
How Never.no’s cloud-based platform Bee-On powered the conversation for ITV’s The Martin Lewis Money Show Live.
Technology Enabling Creativity Panel Discussion
In this session, we will look at developments in technologies that enable creativity and content crafting. The pandemic has driven innovation in remote working and collaboration, accelerating the use of cloud in content production workflows alongside other innovations. In this session, we hear from end users and technology providers about the new technologies and workflows they are tapping to continue high quality, effective production in these changed times.
The fastest way to remote your Avid (or Resolve, or Premiere Pro) workstation
With remote working set to remain a big part of media workflows for the foreseeable future, we examine how to:
- Provide secure remote access with no VPN.
- Find the best PCoIP client.
- Provide seamless storage and asset management – anywhere.
Securing content in a new era of distributed workflows
James Wilson, Head of Aspera Engineering & Operations at IBM, will explore cloud security technology innovations helping media organizations adapt to new, secure ways of working now and in the future—including forensic watermarking-as-a-service, key management integration and BYOK, and credentials encryption.
James will also discuss the importance of cloud-native strategies for remote workflows and how container-based Kubernetes environments will enable media organizations to manage and secure their infrastructure and workflows consistently across applications.
